Birth story - Libby and baby Effie

My pregnancy certainly wasn’t the easiest, being crippled with severe symphysis pubis dysfunction from 15 weeks pregnant wasn’t ideal. Although it was horrible for me, our little girl seemed to be doing fine the whole way through. At one of my last midwife appointments my midwife noticed I was suddenly measuring really large and felt like I had excess fluid. I was sent for a growth scan and thankfully everything was fine, no excess fluid just what seemed to be a very large baby!

I kept going for growth scans to keep an eye on things and the measurements kept going up and down. Taking all circumstances into account I was offered an induction, 4 days before my due date. I always said from the beginning I would never take an induction unless I had no other choice because I was desperate to have a water birth and did not want to be on the drip. I was on the fence as to what to do. I knew I had a midwife appointment the next day so knew I would make my final decision then after speaking to my midwife. She performed a sweep for me and told me that my cervix was nice and low but I wasn’t dilated at all which was to be expected. We spoke about my options, I could have not taken the induction but at this point I was on crutches and in so much pain every second of the day I just couldn’t bare being pregnant anymore and was just so desperate for it to be over. So on August 2nd 2019 we went into hospital to be induced.

At 11am I had the balloon inserted. Unfortunately it didn’t go as smooth as it should have due to the position of my cervix. The nurses wheeled me in gas and air and honestly that was more painful than giving birth. Once the balloon was in I was moved to the ward and the process began. I did end up going into labour but too fast too soon. I hyper stimulated and was having 6 in 10 contractions within a few hours. The balloon was taken out around 7pm and the waves finally eased off, but unfortunately they stopped all together. We were told to get some sleep and at 4:30am the next morning we were woken up to be taken to the labour ward to have my waters broken. I didn’t know at the time but that day August 3rd would be the day we would meet our little girl.

I basically had the birth I always said I never wanted, I was on my back on the bed, on a drip and being monitored. BUT, I wouldn’t change a thing! It was such an amazing, positive experience and I know for a fact without reading the positive birth company book it just wouldn’t have been that way. It is worth its weight in gold.

My husband and I felt so prepared and although we knew what we wanted we were realistic and prepared for all eventualities. I went on the drip at 9am and at 6:02pm our beautiful baby girl Effie was born vaginally, without any tearing and weighing 7lbs 5oz.

My husband and I had tried for years to become pregnant. In the end the only route for us was IVF, on our second round we were lucky enough to finally fall pregnant. All our dreams in that moment came true.

After a failed IVF cycle and years of negative pregnancy tests I wanted to do everything I could to make my pregnancy and birth as positive as possible. A friend recommended hypnobirthing to me and swore by it, I did a bit of research online and it seemed that the positive birth company was the number one choice!

We couldn’t afford the classes but that didn’t matter because there is the option of the online package or book instead. We ordered the book and never looked back. If you only take one thing from The Positive Birth Company, let it be the breathing techniques. Honestly there is no way I could have gone through labour and given birth without that breathing technique, it saved me!

I would do it all again in a heartbeat, when my friends who were due after me went in to have their babies I kept saying to them, I’m honestly jealous of them and wish I was going in to do it again, there is just nothing that can compare to it.